Reuters/AFP/Madrid

Police in Spain’s north African enclave of Ceuta arrested four men yesterday, suspected of belonging to a militant Islamist network that may have been planning an attack in Spain, the interior ministry said.
Spain has stepped up security as well as efforts to prevent the radicalisation of young Muslim citizens following attacks in Paris this month in which Islamist gunmen killed 17 people.
“The four men, of Spanish nationality and Moroccan origin, have a very similar profile to those who carried out the attacks in Paris,” the interior ministry said in a statement.
Video released by the police showed around a dozen heavily-armed officers shining searchlights into windows before storming two houses in the narrow streets of Ceuta before dawn yesterday.
“They are two pairs of brothers, highly radicalised and highly trained,” Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz told reporters.
The brothers, as part of a network, carried out aggressive campaigns on Internet forums using Islamic State (IS) slogans to recruit people to fight in Syria and Iraq and carry out attacks in Western countries, the ministry said. Their activities are still under investigation.
“They formed part of a jihadist cell fully prepared and willing to launch an attack in Spain,” the statement said. It did not say whether the four had made any concrete plans for an attack.
“They have acquired a high level of radicalisation and are even prepared to die in committing a terrorist act,” the statement said.
Spain is among a number of European countries struggling to deter young Muslim citizens from becoming jihadists in Syria or Iraq, fearing they might return to plot attacks on home soil.
The Spanish cabinet has said it will put forward a plan to counter radicalisation among Muslim citizens at its weekly meeting next Friday.
Spanish and Moroccan police arrested seven people in December in a joint operation to prevent the recruitment of women to go to Syria and Iraq to support IS insurgents there.
Last September, Spanish police arrested nine people suspected of belonging to a militant cell linked to Islamic State in Melilla, another Spanish enclave on the northern coast of Africa.
Police seized a nine-millimetre automatic pistol and machetes among other items during yesterday’s raids on two properties.
They were the latest in a string of arrests in Ceuta and Spain’s other north African territory, Melilla, where authorities have been monitoring suspected extremist cells.
Separately, Spanish authorities are investigating suspects linked to the attacks in Paris and other foiled plots in Belgium who are said to have travelled to Spain.
Spanish police have arrested about 50 suspected jihadists over the past year, the ministry said this month. Many of them are suspected of planning to join IS.
Fearing a rise of “homegrown” and “lone wolf” extremists in Spain, the government has been cracking down on their recruitment online.
On March 11, 2004, Al Qaeda-inspired bombings killed 191 people in an attack on Madrid commuter trains.



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